Transformative Education

An efficient way to promote transdisciplinary and holistic learning is to use several languages simultaneously using immersive language learning. We must remember that a substantial part of the world's population is fluent in more than one language. Furthermore, while using a collaborative approach to planning, a work team which might comprise teachers of different origins and specialisations can contribute to this pedagogical added value by making sure to use concepts from a multitude of languages. Just like in many medieval schools of Europe that taught Latin and ancient Greek while most students were already fluent in their vernacular language, or as in the case of the colonial empires of the 19th century who were imposing their language on their colonies of Africa, South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world, where native speakers were de facto educated in a multilingual environment. Even in the most contemporary monolingual countries of the world, it is almost guaranteed that the students will receive part of their education in English, as this language has become the new ‘Lingua Franca’ of the world in the last few decades. However, countries that deliberately choose to offer education in a single language might jeopardise the future of their students by shutting one of the most important doors to global citizenship; being proficient in more than one language.

A Venn diagram depicting a Multilingual immersion environment, on a black background, with three large circles in the colours of green and yellow. In the top circle it says; Written communication, can read and write in more than one language. In the second circle it says Kinesic communication, can perceive nuances in body language associated with more than one language. In the third circle it says Oral communication, can speak and understand more than one language + accents and dialects. At the center where all three circles meet, it says Translanguaging, enhanced concept acquisition skills, draw meaning from multilingual, multimodal input. Where circle one and two meet it says restructuring code-mixing and range. Where circle two and three meet, it says socio-interactional elements and code-switching. Where the second and third circle meets it says mixed lexical and structural elements.

Bilingual-Multilingual Learning

In this chapter, we will analyse the complexities of the relationships between multilingual immersion pedagogy and its impact on the long-term acquisition of knowledge we are referring to as sustainable learning. By using examples from schools in different countries that use multilingual immersion methods, we argue that this type of sustainable holistic pedagogy produces a non-negligible and long-lasting impact on the development of creative thinking abilities, however an ever-greater impact was observed on the acquisition of the conceptualisation skills necessary for the assimilation of topic-specific content in a much more integrative setting. The following analysis is directly inspired by a thesis written in 2015.¹

In an attempt to contribute to the discussion on sustainable learning the following question was raised: “Can a multilingual immersion pedagogy have a positive impact on concept acquisition, creative thinking and conceptualisation of topic-specific content?”:

“Most people would agree that languages are much more than a simple means of communication. Indeed, languages offer ways of conceiving, inventing and contriving things, ideas and explanations, through the mental act of conceptualisation. The idea that languages are essential to the development and formulation of ideas and concepts has provided fertile ground for debate and discussion in the past.”
²

By making a comparative analysis on the numerous multilingual immersion methods utilised around the world the study was able to address the relevance of the juxtaposition of the theoretical aspects of multilingual immersion pedagogy to the empirical evidence gathered in a variety of studies. It contributed to the advancement of multidisciplinary planning methods and pedagogical development, not attempting to measure the impact of immersion schools’ cross-linguistic education on the students’ syntax and grammar. Multilingual immersion pedagogy has moreover been shown to have a positive impact on the acquisition and assimilation of concepts of different levels of complexity.³

For example, in Canada, where bilingualism has been institutionalised, bilingual immersion experimental schools were created in the 1960s by McGill University Professor Wallace Lambert, who is also known as the ‘Father of bilingualism research in psychology’. This professor imagined a different kind of system to teach the two official Canadian languages in a more integrative way, without resorting to the assimilation methods of the past. In this system, the languages were taught as two equal languages rather than one of them being superior to the other.⁴

An image on a black background of a large uneven stone slab completely covered in ancient writing. Above, to the left of the stone, it says The Rosetta Stone in the same brownish colour as that of the stone.

Rosetta Stone

To exemplify how to integrate multilingual methods in the everyday teaching of any subjects, without sacrificing the quality of their native language, one could envisage a lecture taking place in a different language to the textbook used in class, as well as using multimedia sources in any of the two utilised languages. We would suggest that the quality of one’s native language will often improve as a second or even third language is used. Furthermore, it might offer students an opportunity to develop a much broader worldview based on intercultural values. For instance, the Professor in Psycholinguistics at McGill University, Michel Paradis, states: “How conscious metalinguistic knowledge interfaces with unconscious linguistic competence in consciousness remains to be explained”.⁵

“Language is the primary tool human beings use for thinking, communicating and learning. Having a knowledge of several languages can provide new perspectives on the surrounding world, enhanced opportunities to create contacts and greater understanding of different ways of living.”⁶ In addition, some parents might see their children’s second or third language skills as the main added value to their education and that it is something that might help them be more competitive in a labour market of the future. However, some studies ⁷ demonstrate that a multilingual immersion method offers much more than just that. It has a significant impact on the students’ ability to develop better conceptualisation skills. For example, when technology, geography and history are taught in a transdisciplinary fashion using a language immersion method, it definitely helps students develop their language skills as well. Furthermore, it also increases the students’ cross-cultural awareness and their concept acquisition skills simultaneously. Substantiating some of the most important parts in the curriculum, namely language development, “it is important to have an international perspective, to be able to understand one’s own reality in a global context and to create international solidarity, as well as prepare for a society with close contacts across cultural and national borders. Having an international perspective also involves developing an understanding of cultural diversity within the country.”⁸

To teach one’s students is to first understand purpose, subject structures, and ideas within and outside the discipline, every teacher needs to understand that the main task of education is to further the students' quest to become caring people who will thrive in a democratic system and the multilingual immersion method helps to develop a sustainable knowledge-based teaching method that narrows the gap between content and pedagogy. That is to say that the ability to transform knowledge of the subjects into teaching methods and into formats that are pedagogically powerful, yet adaptable to different students' abilities and backgrounds, is very important in a multilingual immersive learning environment.

Pasta Bridge Challenge

The different theories about language acquisition in a multilingual environment tend to present this metaphorical ‘Tower of Babel’ as a blessing rather than as a curse. According to Swain and Johnson, co-authors of the book Immersion Education: International Perspectives, immersion “has a strong record of research and evaluation that compares favourably with that of many other innovations in education”.⁹ Indeed, most authors seem to agree that bilingual and/or multilingual pedagogy are great drivers of innovation in education, and many studies also demonstrate that it also has a positive impact on the children’s cognitive flexibility, as it increases their creative abilities by expanding their conceptual system. In addition, we have noticed that the development of cross-linguistic metaphors is essential to conceptualisation and creativity. According to Professor in Experimental Psychology Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin from the American University of Sharjah, the conceptualisation process serves as a relay station that binds together the scattered thoughts conceived and elaborated during other phases of the intellectual sphere into a well-defined creative idea and forwards this idea to the emotive sphere and thereby brings the creative idea to reality.¹⁰

Scattered thoughts can actually emerge through a cross-linguistic thought process, and some kind of lexical comparison process might lead to an increase in the cognitive abilities necessary for the development of concept acquisition, thus contributing to some kind of sustainable meta-understanding of concepts. According to Comblain and Rondal,¹¹ children attending a foreign language immersion programme tend to become more curious and more interested in learning more languages. In countries where two or more languages are spoken by a large proportion of the population, the children attending immersion programs tend to describe school as an intellectually stimulating environment – one that raises their level of social awareness about their own culture, and about the different cultures and ethnicities that constitute it. Kharkhurin¹² argues that the multilingual “thinking process involves simultaneous activation of various conceptual representations thereby establishing connections between different concepts”.¹³

Multilingual Immersion

Until the 1960s bilingual and multilingual education was almost never encouraged and promoted in public education in most countries around the world. Edwards¹⁴ explains how most people seemed to suffer from “monolingual myopia” before Wallace’s experimental bilingual schools started to emerge in Canada. Indeed, Edwards claims that “monolingual myopia detract attention from the fact that in most parts of the world multilingualism is the norm”.¹⁵ Furthermore, according to Charlotte Burck,¹⁶ nowadays “over half of the world’s population are thought to be either bilingual or multilingual”,¹⁷ therefore more and more children are being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment.

Growing up in a truly polyglot environment is slowly becoming the norm rather than the exception in many parts of the world and educational institutions worldwide have not yet sufficiently caught up with the possible positive implications this could have for learning, as being multilingual can give your brain some remarkable advantages. According to Mia Nacamullis’s Ted-Ed talk from 2015, some of these advantages are even visible, such as a higher density of the grey matter that contains most of your brain's neurons and synapses, and more activity in certain regions when engaging a second language. The fact that a bilingual brain will continuously have to work harder can also help delay the onset of diseases, like Alzheimer's and dementia.¹⁸

The idea of major cognitive benefits to bilingualism might seem intuitive now, but it would probably have surprised earlier experts. Before the 1960s bilingualism was considered a disability, and while a more recent study did show that reaction times and errors increase for some bilingual students in cross-language tests, it also showed that the effort and attention needed to switch between languages triggered more activity in – and potentially strengthened – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.¹⁹ Yet how many teachers can honestly say that they have realised the full potential of all the multilingualism that will inevitably have been present in their respective classrooms, even if too often undisclosed or carefully concealed?

A photo collage with five photographs all depicting teenage students from countries including Sweden, South Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia etc., in a collaborative team-building exercise. In the picture featured top left, we see a blond student in glasses, a hoodie and black trousers smiling broadly to the camera, in his hands he is holding large yellow plastic pipes. To his left is a similarly aged girl with long black hair and dressed in a school uniform consisting of a short black skirt, a white blouse and a knitted vest. She is also holding yellow plastic piping. We also see the hands of other students seemingly involved in the same exercise. The second photograph is from the same scene, but from afar, we see the mountaintops in the distance behind a large high-rise building, in front of the building is the gravel pitch where students are building large "Warka Water Towers" out of the large plastic piping and connectors (Super 4DFrame). The towers are multicoloured, plastic, and measure about 3 meters high. In the third photograph we see a group of five students from different countries hard at work collaborating on the construction of the base of a Warka Water Tower. Their tower is in orange plastic, two boys and a girl are kneeling on the ground around the tower and another two girls are standing back a bit, offering advice. In the fourth picture we see three teenage boys, two in school uniforms with black hair and the third one dressed more casually in a brown jacket and with brown hair, they are all standing underneath their Warka Tower, in deep concentration, busy assembling its base. In the final photograph we see five large finished Warka Water Towers from a distance on the gravel pitch with several high-rise buildings and some trees behind them.

Multicultural Learning

Multicultural Immersion

In order to create the right conditions for an increased concept acquisition in an immersion environment, teachers need to transcend the language barriers and embrace a more holistic, cross-cultural approach sometimes called multicultural immersion. Boyd and Brock²⁰ claim that “when educators better understand the cultural backgrounds of the children they serve, they can design classroom instruction that builds on and values these differences”,²¹ which is an idea that very much chimes with the concept of relational teaching in general, as previously discussed. The notion of tolerance, creativity, and curiosity in a multicultural environment is essential to the success of multilingual immersion pedagogy.

While Canada’s multiculturalism and bilingual education represent an opportunity for educationalists to foster students’ intercultural citizenship, in New Brunswick²² – Canada’s only officially bilingual province – provincial language ideological debates might create structures impeding Anglophone French immersion on students’ intercultural development. In a very recent article, Marshall and Bokhorst-Heng examine the impact of ideological forces – the macro level – on the discursive construction of these objectives: the meso level. Ideological ambiguities are noted: Cultural learning is positioned within national ideologies of multiculturalism and of bilingualism for economic capital on the global market, distancing it from its relationship to New Brunswick’s history. Students’ functional communication with Francophones is privileged over their personal transformation. The article suggests ways to discuss language ideologies with French as a second language students to foster intercultural development.²³ In accordance with this, we might therefore claim that the most significant threat or impediment to a successful multicultural immersion pedagogy is a fear of transcending those language and cultural barriers, fear of the unknown or the “other” being a feeling that could be described as a very naturally human weakness, and the teacher might thus be in danger of failing to embrace the more holistic, cross-cultural approach that has here been termed multicultural immersion.

Image on a black background, with a large circle, symbols and text in a gradient colour scheme from green to yellow. Above the circle is the text Australian Indigenous Ways of Learning as a Tool for Cross-Cultural Immersion. The emblem underneath consists of 8 smaller circles in a ring, all connected by a crisscross pattern of triple lines. In the first little circle there is an interconnected spiral and next to the circle it says Community Links. In the second little circle there is an butterfly shape with vertical lines and next to the circle it says Deconstruct, Reconstruct. In the third little circle there are three bent lines with a circular shape in the middle and next to the circle it says Non-Linear. In the fourth little circle there are two bent lines with a fish swimming upwards and next to the circle it says Land Links. In the fifth little circle there is sun-like symbol and next to the circle it says Symbols & Images. In the sixth little circle there is a hand and next to the circle it says Non-verbal. In the seventh little circle there is a wavy line with three dots in the hollows and next to the circle it says Learning Maps. In the final little circle there is a boomerang shape and next to the circle it says Story Sharing.

Cross-Cultural Immersion

Concept Acquisition

In order to better illustrate the idea behind the mental representations defined as concepts, let us demonstrate how concept acquisition can emerge from the formative aspects of multilingual pedagogy. Before talking about the existing theories on the subject, we will provide two different examples taken from history, technology, and geography classes, where abstract ideas or words were conceptualised more efficiently by students because of the cross-linguistic added-value of the language immersion method.

To provide an example of active learning where the dialogue between the teacher and the students might lead to an educationally sustainable outcome, we will use the example of an 8th-grade history class, where students use a regular history textbook in Swedish and attend the lectures being taught in English. The third chapter of this particular book, entitled New Ideas and Trade Routes, is concerned mainly with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. To begin with, many students seemed to be familiar with the term Renaissance, when it was first mentioned orally, and when written on the whiteboard in class. Then, as per usual, the students opened their history textbooks in Swedish and saw that it is spelled Renässans in Swedish. At first, the teacher saw many of them writing the word down in their notebooks at the top of a blank page, but it appeared as if the students did not necessarily reflect on the meaning of the historical concept of Renaissance. The impression was that they were only writing a word without conceptualising it. They were then told that “Renaissance is not only a word for a period of history that you need to memorise in order to get a good grade in a test.”

The goal as a teacher is not only to teach facts, but most importantly to help students to find ways and strategies to assimilate concepts that will be useful in the development of their reflection and analytical skills, but most importantly to provide an opportunity to induce life-long learning. Indeed, the main goal is to help them to achieve a higher level of understanding and to give them the opportunity to conceptualise a historical term such as this one. The students were then asked to use their knowledge of French; as they are exposed to French on a daily basis in our language immersion school, it might give them the ability to conceptualise such a word differently. They soon realised that they could have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the word “renaissance”, because most of them understood the meaning of “naissance” to mean “birth” in French. Less than a few seconds later many students raised their hands to share their newfound understanding of the word. They soon understood that Renässans was a term directly borrowed from the French and that it meant “rebirth” in English.

Consequently, the students started to extrapolate about the meaning of this historical period, before they had even begun the chapter. Questions and reflections quickly emerged in class discussion. Students were making very interesting comments like: “Could it be some kind of social rebirth after the black death?” – “Is it more a rebirth of old forgotten ideas?” – “No, I think it must be a kind of rebirth in art, literature, and science because I know that Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Shakespeare lived at that time”. They felt proficient enough to dare to take risks by generating hypotheses based on their multilingual skills. Thanks to the added value of their three weekly hours of French immersion, they managed to develop their reflection skills as they conceptualised an important historical term.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nevertheless, some students drew strange conclusions in their attempt to conceptualise other words associated with the Renaissance, but as they studied the chapter, they self-corrected some of the assumptions made in their attempt to further conceptualise ideas and terms. However, as mentioned previously, risk-taking in learning is a positive sign that demonstrates that the students are stimulated. This is another example showing how multilingual pedagogy can contribute to better understanding of the historical concept that we call the Renaissance. The students were independently able to conceptualise the idea that the Renaissance was a rather undefined time period of rebirth with a very logical and intuitive historical timeline, based on their own cross-linguistic semantic analysis. Furthermore, by using the concepts of ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, they came to the conclusion that the Renaissance was a time period that roughly went from the time of the ‘Black Death’ at the end of the ‘Dark Ages’ (Den mörka tiden/Âge sombre) until the peak of ‘the Enlightenment’ (Upplysningen/Siècle des Lumières).

Similarly, in 7th grade Geography the students use a textbook in Swedish, where the first few chapters deal with physical geography. The multilingual immersion method provides an opportunity to enhance the students’ concept acquisition in the subchapter about plate tectonics. While being taught about the process of continental drift in English, the students were skim-reading the paragraphs about the tectonic forces, and some were looking at illustrations and graphics. A video projection with different illustrations was also utilised for the three main geological processes: divergent boundaries, fault lines, and convergent boundaries. At that point, a student raised his hand and daringly made an observation based on the Swedish words in the textbook. He said: “The earth must be expanding!” When asked why he thought so. He answered: “Well if the divergent zones are called spridningzon it means that the earth crust is spreading in those places, while in other places the continental plates are stopped by the kollisionzon (zone of collision). “That’s why the earth must be slowly expanding!” he said.

In order to correct his false assumption about the geological process we were studying, he was told that in French we call it zone de subduction, and in English we call it a subduction zone. Then the students were asked to investigate independently on their tablets and computers reflecting on the ideas behind the terminology used to explain these geological processes. Less than a minute later someone said: “Subduktionszon is also a Swedish word, and there is even one more synonym called neddykningszon!” While congratulating her, the students were asked to analyse the meaning of the word and see if they can generate a better hypothesis than the previous one. Very soon someone said: “In English ‘sub’ means ‘under’ so one plate must go under another plate!” (like in the words subway or underground). Then someone else voiced: “Well that explains the Swedish synonym neddykningszon, it’s as if the plate is diving under another plate.”

The class discussion continued, and many interesting comments emerged, proving that the multilingual concept acquisition hypothesis was helping the students to develop their analytical skills while increasing their conceptualisation. Comments like: “It reminds me of the French and English word abduction or abducted, which mean to be taken away or to disappear, so the plate must disappear under the crust to become new magma.” “Yeah, it’s just like a conveyor belt that goes very, very, very slow, so the earth cannot expand, because as soon as a divergent zone expands a subduction zone is diving under the crust!” Then, as we looked at the map, the students continued to make observations that demonstrated their creative thinking, like: “If India is going under the big Asian continental plate that must be the reason why it’s called a subcontinent.” or “Why do we call the Pacific Ocean Stilla havet if it is surrounded by subduction zones that create big earthquakes and volcanoes?” For analytical purposes, the example of the words kollisionzon/zone de subduction/subduction zone was included in a student survey, in order to see if they agreed that these different concepts conveyed different conceptual meanings when they were represented by words in different languages.

Image on a black background of a large heart-shape in a gradient colour-scheme from green to yellow. Inside the heart the word Welcome is written in nearly fifty languages; Welcome Bienvenue Tervetuloa 어서 오십시오 Ласкаво просимо පිළිගනිමු 欢迎 Hoş geldin स्स्वागत हे Herzlich willkommen స్వాగతం Karibu Բարի գալուստ Xoş gəldiniz வரவேற்பு Receber Bonvenon ברוך הבא Välkommen ยินดีต้อนรับ Bienvenido Velkommen いらっしゃいませ Тавтай морил សូមស្វាគមន៍ Üdvözöljük እንኳን ደህና መጣህ Mirë se vini أهلا بك Добродошли Siyakwamukela Powitanie स्वागत Benvenuto සාදරයෙන් добро пожаловать छმოგესალმებით Καλώς ορίσατε স্বাগত സ്വാഗതം Bine ati venit ಸ್ವಾಗತ ਸੁਆਗਤ ਹੈ Добре дошли Welkom 歡迎

Multilingual Education

This pedagogical approach definitely fulfils some of the most important knowledge requirements for 9th grade, but most importantly it illustrates how a constructive multilingual class discussions can lead to an enhanced integrative and sustainable didactic approach. By using these specific examples, we demonstrated that multilingual immersion pedagogy might have a positive impact on the conceptualisation of topic-specific content, supported by an impressive body of empirical data in favour of this idea. Moreover, the described language immersion method could contribute to a deeper reflection on the concept acquisition processes, and a stimulating multilingual immersion-teaching situation can become a highly beneficial pedagogical tool helping to develop the students’ reflection skills and their overall understanding of topic-specific content in any language.

Longchamps, P., Multilingual Immersion in Education for a Multidimensional Conceptualization of Knowledge: A Case Study of Bilingual Montessori School of Lund, Malmö University Electronic Publishing, 2015, http://muep.mau.se/handle/2043/20207.
Ibid., p. 7
Kharkhurin, Anatoliy, V., Multilingualism and Creativity, Bristol: MPG Books Group, 2012, p.98.
Comblain, A. and Rondal, J.A., Apprendre les langues, Sprimont (Belgium): Pierre Mardaga éditeur, 2001, pp.7–9.
Paradis, Michel. Declarative and Procedural Determinants of Second Languages, Studies in Bilingualism, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009, p.104.
Skolverket (Swedish National Agency for Education), Lgr11, https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=3984.
See for example Longchamps, P., Multilingual Immersion in Education for a Multidimensional Conceptualization of Knowledge: A Case Study of Bilingual Montessori School of Lund, 2015, Malmö University Electronic Publishing, http://muep.mau.se/handle/2043/20207.
Ibid., p.12.
Johnson, R. K. and Swain, M., Immersion Education: International Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.13.
Kharkhurin, A., Multilingualism and Creativity, Bristol: MPG Books Group, 2012, p.130.
Comblain, A., Rondal, J.A., Apprendre les langues, Sprimont (Belgium): Pierre Mardaga éditeur, 2001.
Kharkhurin, A., Multilingualism and Creativity, Bristol: MPG Books Group, 2012.
Ibid., p.2.
Edwards, V., The Power of Babel: Teaching and Learning in Multilingual Classrooms, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 1998.
Ibid., p.87.
Burck, C., Multilingual Living, Chippenham and Eastbourne: Antony Rowe Ltd, 2005.
Ibid., p.1.
Lövdén, M., Fratiglioni, L., Glymour, M.M., Lindenberger, U., and Tucker-Drob, E.M., Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2020, Vol, 21, No. 1, pp.6–41, doi:10.1177/1529100620920576.
As discussed in Mia Nacamulli’s TED-Ed, June 2015, www.ted.com/talks/mia_nacamulli_the_benefits_of_a_bilingual_brain?language=en#t-1791.
Boyd, F. and Brock, C., Multicultural and Multilingual Literacy and Language: Contexts and Practices, New York: The Guilford Press, 2004.
Ibid., p.5.
New Brunswick, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, The Linguistic and Cultural Development Policy: A societal project for the French education system. Fredericton, NB: Province of New Brunswick. 2014, www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/ed/pdf/K12/comm/LinguisticAndCulturalDevelopmentPolicy.pdf Google Scholar.
Marshall, K. and Bokhorst-Heng, W., Language Ideological Debates and Intercultural Learning in French Immersion Education, The Canadian Modern Language Review, 2020, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp.175–193.